Representative Party of Alberta
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The Representative Party of Alberta was a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada formed by Raymond Speaker in the mid-1980s. Speaker was first elected the Alberta legislature in 1963 at the age of 27 under the governing Social Credit Party of Alberta banner.
After that party was replaced in government by the Alberta Progressive Conservatives, Speaker continued to sit in the Social Credit caucus, now as the Official Opposition. After serving as party leader and Leader of the Official Opposition in the early 1980s, Speaker resigned from the party and sat as an independent MLA.
In 1984, he helped form the Representative Party, and was elected leader in November of that year. In the provincial elections held on May 8, 1986, the Representative Party ran 46 candidates in Alberta’s 79 ridings, but saw only two of its candidates elected. The party received 36,656 votes, or 5.14% of the popular vote. The party was later disbanded, and Speaker joined the Progressive Conservative caucus.
Speaker was elected to the House of Commons in 1993 under the Reform Party of Canada banner for Lethbridge, Alberta. He left the House of Commons in 1997.
In 2003, he helped in the merger process, that created the Conservative Party of Canada